Scarlett Undercover

by Jennifer Latham

  I got in and slammed the door behind me. Mook hit the gas.

  “How did you know where I was?” I asked. My body shivered from the shock of it all.

  “I am your mu’aqqibat.” Mook’s eyes flicked back and forth between the road and his mirrors. He looked dangerously close to being nervous.

  “Sure. My guardian angel. How could I forget?”

  Mook must have noticed my teeth chattering. He turned a knob on the dash, and a cloud of dust and tepid air chuffed out of the car’s vents. “Takes a few minutes to warm up,” he muttered.

  I shivered some more. Took out my phone and dialed Gemma’s number. She didn’t answer once. Twice. The third time I left a message for her to call me, hoping like hell she could.

  “I think they took her, Mook,” I said. “Those psychos kidnapped my client.”

  His eyes were in constant motion. Nervous energy clung to his movements like bad cologne.

  “Hand me a cigarette.” He pointed his chin toward the crumpled pack on the dashboard.

  “Take me to her aunt’s,” I said. “I need to make sure she’s not there.”

  “No.”

  I slumped in my seat.

  “Please, akht. A cigarette.”

  I shook out one of the cigarettes and punched down the old car’s lighter. Put the cigarette in my mouth. Touched the hot orange coil to its end. Inhaled and got a queasy nicotine buzz. “Here.” I handed it over.

  “Thank you.” Mook took a long drag.

  “The same people who killed Abbi are after me,” I said. “Did you know that?”

  His eyes lingered in the rearview. “They are not people.”

  “Do you know about Solomon’s ring and the Shubaak?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you believe they’re magic?”

  He took another drag and blew it out.

  “Of course you do,” I said, frustrated. “You think you’re an angel.”

  Mook downshifted and stopped at a red light. “One need not believe in something for it to be true,” he said.

  “The only thing I believe right now is that I need to find Gemma. They’re going to hurt her, Mook, just like they hurt Abbi.”

  The light turned green. He put the car in first and popped the clutch.

  “The girl’s Qadar is her own.”

  “I’m part of her fate,” I said, getting angry. “And it’s starting to look like she’s part of mine. I’m supposed to help her, Mook!”

  “You are an Abd al-Malik,” he countered. “It is my duty to keep you safe.”

  I tightened my grip on my backpack strap. I had no idea how he knew all he did, but I was past caring. At the next red light, I was going to bail.

  “Don’t,” he said, looking at me through a haze of cigarette smoke. The light ahead of us went yellow. The car slowed. And then things went bad all over again.

  “Ya Allah!” Mook shouted. “Duck!”

  I dropped to the floor just in time to hear a hollow-edged tink overhead. When I looked up, there was a dart lodged against the front of my headrest, still quivering from the impact.

  “What the…?” I popped my head up to look out the window. A gray sedan fishtailed in front of us, but Mook’s eyes were still on his rearview. He was hunched over the wheel, knuckles white on the gearshift. “Iblis,” he barked. “Get down!”

  I dropped as low as I could, wedged myself tight against the seat, and curled into a ball. The car swerved, throwing my sore head against the door. My guts heaved. Mook took a corner in second gear so fast I smelled burnt rubber.

  “Is he gone?”

  Mook didn’t answer. He accelerated, turned hard to the right, harder back to the left. Then we did the same thing all over again. And again. Once more, and he motioned for me to get up.

  “Take that thing out and wipe down the headrest.” He pointed to the dart. “There are rags in the backseat.”

  My hands shook as I pulled the dart out and swiped a greasy square of old T-shirt across the pinprick hole it left.

  “Where’d you learn to drive like that?” I said shakily.

  “Mumbai.”

  He didn’t elaborate. I let it slide and held up the dart. “What should I do with this?”

  “Wrap it in the rag, and don’t touch the tip. It would be most inconsiderate of you to die after all the traffic violations I just committed to keep you alive.”

  I bound the dart up tight and set it on the floor of the backseat. Mook’s cigarette was down to the filter, making him squint against the smoke in his eyes. I pulled the stub out of his mouth and lit a new one from it.

  “Poison darts?” I said.

  Mook took a long drag.

  “Perhaps.”

  “Like the one that killed Abbi.”

  “Yes.”

  Warehouses and abandoned piers flashed by as we drove along the river.

  “And that was Iblis behind us?”

  Mook nodded.

  “As in Iblis the jinn?”

  He shrugged. “Iblis takes many forms.”

  Mook was back to being cryptic. It made me feel better.

  “You’re not going to help me find Gemma, are you?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Then at least take me to get the Shubaak. As an Abd al-Malik, I’m entitled to that.”

  He tucked his cigarette into the corner of his mouth and put both hands on the steering wheel. At the next light, he pushed the turn signal down and headed inland. “Where is it?”

  “Las Almas Teachers Credit Union,” I said. “Central branch.”

  “Very well.”

  “Thanks, Mook,” I said after we’d driven awhile. “For everything.”

  “I do as I must,” he answered.

  “Don’t we all,” I said.

  “Don’t we all.”

  20

  The dog from Calamus was in front of the Laundromat when we pulled up, watching Mrs. Soo waddle past in knee-highs and a lime-green housecoat.

  “That dog is following me,” I said.

  Mook didn’t say a word. Hadn’t, in fact, since I’d taken the real Shubaak out of Abbi’s safe deposit box and put it in my backpack. It seemed right, having it with me, though I couldn’t say why. Maybe I really was an Abd al-Malik and needed the bottle to feel like I was doing my job. Or maybe I just wanted it in case I needed leverage to keep Gemma safe. After all, no antique was worth a little girl’s life.

  But I had no intention of giving the Shubaak up easily.

  “Did you hear me, Mook? I said that dog is following me.”

  He motioned for me to stay put, got out of the car, and came around to my door. When I looked up, I saw the Mook I used to know—the one who’d sit next to Ummi on a park bench while I ran around the playground, just because. The one who snuck date-stuffed maamoul cookies to me when Ummi wasn’t looking.

  He opened up his coat and motioned toward his chest. I threw myself up and against him with enough momentum to bring down a linebacker. His thin body held, his arms wrapped the duster closed over my head. I smelled leather and cigarette smoke, felt the wiry muscles of his chest under my cheek.

  He took off fast and hoisted me over the curb with barely a break in stride. A few steps later I heard the bell on the Laundromat’s door, smelled soap and heat and stale coffee. The duster opened. We were facing the back bank of washers, with Mook’s body between me and the window. Mrs. Soo’s lips mashed together in disapproval. She muttered something in Korean and went back to folding the pair of tighty-whities in her hands.

  “I’m going to my office,” I said, making for the back stairway. Mook pulled me back by my bad wrist.

  “It isn’t safe, akht.”

  “But we ditched them. They don’t even know we’re here!”

  He gave me an annoyed look. “Do you honestly believe I haven’t noticed the two women following you?”

  I was still too worn out from the bridge to pout.

  “You mean Shorty and Blondie?” I said. “They�
�re just keeping an eye on me. Or trying to, at least.”

  Mook frowned. “We’re going to my apartment.”

  Mrs. Soo’s mouth pinched so tight that the rest of her face puckered in around it. If I hadn’t caught sight of the hooded shape outside, putting a long cylinder to its mouth, she might have made me laugh. Instead, I clotheslined Mook across the chest and dropped both of us to the ground.

  “Ibn il-kalb!” he cursed as a dart tunked through the window.

  “Sorry.” I rolled over and stared up at the thing, sticking out of the wall, dead-on at head level.

  “Move!” he barked. “Stay low and get to the supply closet.”

  I dragged myself across the floor, Mook close on my heels. He reached up when we got to the door, turned the knob, pushed me into a tiny room stacked high with little boxes of detergent and fabric softener. Beyond that was a metal door, triple-locked and heavy enough to keep out a zombie apocalypse.

  Mook kicked the first door shut behind us and made quick work of the locks on the second. It swung open into a black, lightless space.

  “Go!” He shoved me inside.

  “What about Mrs. Soo?”

  “They don’t care about her. She’ll be fine.”

  I felt blindly for something, anything, to help me get my bearings.

  “You’re in my apartment,” Mook said. “There’s a light switch on the wall above you. Bolt the door as soon as I’m gone and don’t open it for anyone.”

  “Wait… where are you going?”

  “Back,” he said. The door thudded closed. I slammed the three locks home, one after the other. Sank to the floor. Let the numbness in my heart spread to skin and muscle and bone. The dark was empty. Quiet. I willed myself to be the same. My eyelids sagged. Right up until the ring I’d set for Gemma’s phone split the silence in two.

  “Gemma?” I said, too loud.

  “Iblis is not pleased with you, girl,” came the spear-tipped response.

  I sat up straight against the wall behind me. “Who is this?”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already. We only just left each other on the bridge.”

  Blondie.

  Knowing she was out there, that she had Gemma, gave me the kick start I needed to flip back into detective mode.

  “How’s the head?” I said, channeling my inner smartass.

  She gave an ugly laugh.

  “I know you think you’re funny, but Hashim will take care of that soon enough.”

  “Is he tougher than the guy on the bridge?” I asked. “Because that guy’s lucky I let him keep breathing.”

  “That was Hashim.” Her words curled at the corners like toxic smoke. “And you’ve made him very, very angry. He’s coming for you, girl, even though Iblis ordered him not to. In fact, you’ll be lucky if he doesn’t tear your little friend apart.”

  The last bit hit me like a quick left hook. “Where is she? Where’s Gemma?”

  “Safe. For now. But if you cross us, we’ll kill her.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Personally? You. Dead.”

  “Too bad your boss doesn’t have better aim, then, or I would be.”

  Her throaty giggle made my skin crawl.

  “Iblis never misses, fool.”

  “Well, he did today. Now tell me what he wants.”

  “You are an Abd al-Malik. Guardian of the Shubaak. What do you think he wants?”

  I felt my backpack for the outlines of the decoy and the real Shubaak inside.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re a poor liar, and the little girl will die a bad death because of it. Good-bye.”

  Panic ripped at my gut. “Wait!” I shouted.

  “Yes?”

  “I can get you the Shubaak.”

  “That’s better. When?”

  My head spun.

  “Friday,” I said.

  “Friday is fine if all you want for your trouble is a corpse.”

  “Tomorrow, then. Midnight.”

  “Better.”

  “At Woolrich Station,” I said, thinking there were always people at the city’s main train depot. “Under the clock in the main concourse.”

  “The Parker,” she countered. “Midnight. Oh, and Scarlett?”

  “What?”

  “Do look out for Hashim.”

  The line went dead.

  I thought about screaming. Hitting the walls. Weeping. Problem was, I didn’t have the energy for it. Or the time.

  Instead, I dug around for Quinn’s phone and pulled up Iblis’s photo stream. Gemma was there in a new post, face streaked with tears, eyes terrified. They hadn’t added a caption. Hadn’t needed to. Iblis’s message was perfectly clear.

  And I was going to make him regret it.

  As I sank into the cushions of Mook’s couch, my aching brain warned me not to go to sleep with a concussion. I told it to shut up and leave me alone. Fortunately, it did. And when I came to five hours later, it wasn’t holding a grudge.

  The apartment was small and windowless, with furniture salvaged from street corners and a thick, permanent cigarette fug. A pizza box sat on the coffee table next to me. Didn’t want to wake you. Bon appétit was scribbled on the box in Mook’s messy hand. Inside, the pie was almost warm. My stomach balked when the yeasty, cardboard smell hit my nose. Then it remembered I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, and reconsidered.

  Turned out not getting killed was hungry work.

  Once I’d wolfed down three slices, I went into the bathroom and found jeans, an oversize men’s oxford shirt, and polka-dotted boy briefs draped over the edge of the tub. The shirt was Mook’s, the rest had come from the load of clothes I’d left in the Laundromat’s washer earlier. I brushed my teeth with my finger. Took a bath so hot it nearly made me cry. Then got dressed and called my sister.

  “It’s about time, Lettie,” Reem said over the hospital’s background music of voices and beeps.

  “Sorry. I was sorting through some stuff over at the office and forgot to look at the clock. I should probably just sleep on the couch here.…”

  “I know,” she said. “Mook phoned to tell me you were there. Is the laundry done?”

  I looked down at my jeans and smiled to myself, thinking Mook might not be such a bad guardian angel after all.

  “It’s done.”

  “Good. Get some sleep,” Reem said. “I start a double shift tomorrow, so I won’t see you till Friday.”

  “I’ll sleep if you do,” I said.

  Reem laughed. “Of course. Oh, and, Lettie?”

  “Hmm?”

  “We’re going to Jumu’ah prayers together.”

  “I’d like that,” I said. And it was true. Because even though I wanted Gemma home safe and Solomon’s ring in my pocket and the Children of Iblis destroyed, what I needed more than anything else was to stay alive long enough to pray with my sister on Friday.

  “Good,” she said. “Love you.”

  I started to say the words back, but they caught in my throat like oversize pills. By the time they came out, Reem was gone. Tell her yourself at the mosque, I thought. Then I checked to make sure the Shubaak and its decoy were still in my backpack, put on my boots, stepped into the supply closet, and braced to face down whoever—whatever—was waiting for me outside.

  21

  The door to the Laundromat opened an inch and stuck. I pushed harder, felt whatever was blocking it give just enough for me to slip a hand through.

  “Mook?”

  I pushed harder. Visions of my friend, dying in agony like Abbi had, poison shutting his organs down, flashed through my head.

  “Mook!” I slammed my hip into the door over and over until the resistance gave.

  It wasn’t Mook on the other side. It was the dog.

  By the chilly light of the bare bulb over the laundry sink, I could see her broad head and brindled coat. Her bad ear hung at a crazy angle from its stump of connective tissue and skin, and her single, smart eye
was too human by half.

  I shrank back. Ummi had taught me dogs were dirty and dangerous. They were fine for sniffing bombs and guarding sheep, but keeping them in the house was out of the question. I’d never been allowed to pet them at the park. Not even the little fuzzy ones with bows on their ears.

  This dog didn’t have bows on her ears.

  “Go away.” I pressed my back against the doorframe.

  She didn’t budge.

  I took a step out of the closet.

  She growled, low at first, then louder. I moved back. The growl stopped.

  “I have to leave,” I said.

  She shifted, toenails clicking against the linoleum floor. There was something sympathetic in the gesture. Sympathetic, but unyielding.

  I tried going forward again. She growled again.

  “Fine.” I retreated into the closet. “Be that way.”

  She sank to her haunches, calm as a four-legged Buddha.

  I waited.

  She dropped to her belly.

  “Stupid dog,” I said.

  Her muzzle settled onto her paws.

  “You suck.”

  I wasn’t going anywhere.

  It stung, calling Deck for help, but with the dog on guard outside and Mook gone, I had no choice.

  “You have to stay there,” he said as soon as he picked up.

  “How did you know what I wanted?” I was angry he’d gotten a jump on me already.

  “Mook told Ma what’s going on. He said you’d try to get me to help you tonight and…”

  “And what? What else did Mook say?”

  “He said if I did, they’d kill you.”

  “He’s full of shit.”

  “He’s your mu’aqqibat.”

  Mook had come through for me. Wait. Scratch that. Mook had come through for me huge, saving my ass and helping me get the real Shubaak from the bank. But Deck’s words still chafed like burlap pants.

  “With all the awful stuff that goes on in this world,” I said, “all the nasty ways people suffer and die, you’re telling me you believe in guardian angels?”

  Deck didn’t answer right away. I thought about his lips, how close they must be to the phone, how they’d feel against mine.

  “You can’t die,” he said. “You and Manny are the Abd al-Malik. You’re too important.”